


Who Knew First

by TellMeNoAgain



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fluff, Multi, Polyamory, Sweetness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21963859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TellMeNoAgain/pseuds/TellMeNoAgain
Summary: Just a drabble of fluffy goodness.  Shouldn't be any spoilers for anything!~~~They argue about it a lot, who knew first.  They argue about it because they argue about everything small and unimportant, good-naturedly. They argue about the small unimportant things because when the chips are down, they don’t have time to argue at all.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey
Comments: 16
Kudos: 150





	Who Knew First

**Author's Note:**

> As always, jf4m, YOU ARE THE BEST BETA IN THE MULTIVERSE. 
> 
> All mistakes are my own.
> 
> For once, nothing too shocking or triggerwarningworthy! 
> 
> Star Wars makes me a better person, I guess.

They argue about it a lot, who knew first. They argue about it because they argue about everything small and unimportant, good-naturedly. They argue about the small unimportant things because when the chips are down, they don’t have time to argue at all. Poe always claims superior experience and knowledge gave him the first tip-off, and Finn and Rey can’t refute that. Poe is almost indiscriminate in who he’ll flirt with, who he’ll take to bed. Rey had a bad few weeks, early on, where she thought, well, she thought that was because she-they- weren’t  _ enough _ for him. They’d had some not-so-good-natured fights during those weeks, sorting out everyone’s needs and wants, and building a better foundation, one without cracks for any of them to fall in. There was a war on, there wasn’t a lot of time, but there was time for  _ this _ , time to be  _ sure _ , and they took it.

But it turns out he doesn’t have a lot of experience with  _ this _ , has never had this solid wall of you-can-do-no-wrong to come home to, so he’s  _ wrong _ about being first. For all of his sexing around, he gets to have done a lot of things first, but he’s  _ not _ automatically the winner of the who-knew-first fight.

Finn claims he knew in the marketplace, claims he knew as he ran with Rey, claims he knew the moment he saw Poe and certainly by the time Poe named him. For awhile they all let him win, because that was… that was pretty  _ early _ , that was pretty  _ soon _ , but then Leia interrupts their fight one time over breakfast to say with a smile full of mischief, “But Finn, you  _ hoped _ , you didn’t  _ know _ . Those are two very different things.” So, he’s also not automatically the winner just because he was the one who had  _ hope _ , first. 

Rey usually sits this argument out, because she’s the one who read the lines of connection between them and  _ said _ it first, and that’s really her only ammunition. She loves tracing the line of life and light between them at night while the other two sleep. She can do it no matter where they are in the wide universe, no matter how far away they are stretched. It’s as easy as tracing their lips with a fingertip when they are inches from her. It was one of the first things Leia ever taught her to do, to trace those lines of connection. She knows Leia counts her own every night, after every battle, tracing and retracing the life she shares with the people who work and sweat and fight with her, traces the life she shares with the son she carried next to her heart. She says it makes her stronger, more connected to the Force, and Rey believes her. There’s even a line, Rey knows, between her and BB-8, between Leia and R2, made possible because nothing is empty of the Force. Rey picks up the habit from Leia, but maybe she’s lost fewer people, maybe she feels less responsibility, because mostly she only traces Chewie and Finn, Rose, Leia, Poe... and Kylo. 

The line between her and Kylo is thick, thick enough that she could walk across it to him, anywhere in the universe, she knows it. Thick enough that he will find her, eventually, she knows that, too. Leia has seen it, they spent an afternoon meditating and visualizing until she could. Leia sat silently, watching it pulse and ebb, finally saying, “I do not know what this means, but I have never seen a bond like it. And I have been a Master for a long time, padawan, and have seen many things.” It made Rey shiver, at the time, and every night as she retraces that bond, she thinks,  _ why? _ and shivers again. He has offered her a dark throne, and she fears she may one day sit beside him on it, compelled by the sheer strength of their connection in the Force.

She doesn’t  _ want _ it, though. She  _ likes _ what she has with Poe and Finn, she loves it, it feeds her heart and her soul and she is surrounded in love when she lies between them. Or beside them. Or in a corner of the galaxy far from them, at night, tracing their bonds. She  _ likes _ it. It is, of all the things they face every day, the least complicated. She works so hard, tries to push her soul to grow, grow, grow- grow  _ faster _ \- and it is an endless source of relaxation. Here is this one good thing that simply  _ is _ . She does not need to work to make it  _ better,  _ it is already the best.

Other people have come to depend on it, too, she notices. They  _ all _ notice it. Rose, her face smudged and exhausted, hands shaking from all of the repairs, will sit next to Finn and say, “So, when does Poe get back?” and then watch his face for the way it lights up with excitement as he describes the days and hours of waiting left. Rey has watched him pass that spark to Rose so many times, when he isn’t even aware he’s infecting her with his hope, with his love of the future and what it will bring him.

And she knows it works that way for so many others. Kaydel will sidle up to Rey and say, “Your boys are fighting again,” and they will giggle and go sneak closer to watch them throw things at each other until they’re in each other’s spaces, heads tilting, and Kaydel will whisper, “I’m out, I’ll warn away, get them to a  _ tent _ ,” with a snort. Poe and Kaydel both grew up in the Resistance, his patterns of flirtation are a joke well-loved by many, and there’s not many who haven’t had to play wingman abruptly and unexpectedly at some point. But Kaydel is so serious, she has had so few opportunities to play, sneaking around with Rey raises her shoulders and Rey can watch the tension ease as she walks away, giggling and snorting.

Even Leia depends on their bond. Leia, who uses Poe’s love for the other two to get him to slow down and  _ think _ , like a cudgel to the back of his head. It’s brutal, and once she realizes it will work  _ every time _ , she wields it like a barbarian. “Think, Poe, put Rey on that transport, what is the best solution, one that does not depend on  _ luck _ ?” she’ll ask, or “Well, there’s no choice for it, Finn will have to stay behind to guard, he’s our best hope, what will he need to survive?” It becomes such a pattern that even Poe realizes what’s going on, and then he starts to do it, too, because it  _ works _ . It keeps everyone safer, makes him a better commander. It becomes such a habit that his troops love him not just for his daring, but for his heart, that keeps each one of them as safe as the people he treasures most in the galaxy. No one talks about the time before, the time when it wasn’t like that, no one wants to remember Poe without his twin anchors named Rey and Finn. It is a strange thing, memory, that shies from the knowledge that he was a bad commander, inexperienced, and people lie dead, now, who might have lived if anyone had known the trick of making Poe stop and  _ think  _ back in those days. But Leia remembers, and every time she watches him say, “What’d I’d do if Finn was riding sweep, well, I’d-” she smiles, a small proud smile, no matter what odds they are facing on that day.

Rey loves the moments when none of them are thinking best, though. It is so easy to get Finn to that place, he trusts so much, he  _ hopes _ with his whole being. She loves him for his easy enthusiasm about everyone and everything good in the galaxy, every new experience that does not  _ hurt _ him. He wears Poe’s jacket stretched across his shoulder like a second skin, and she loves to slip her fingers across the leather and watch Poe bite his lip with desire at the both of them, switching off on his day and switching on to the memories of his nights beside them, between them,  _ in  _ them.

She knows now, as she didn’t know in the beginning, that Poe chases and hunts and catches other loves because that is how he grew up, grabbing for every small joy and gasp of delight life has ever afforded him. Finn, heart-bruised and nearly broken, _raised_ _wrong_ , has never doubted Poe. Rey sometimes feels small and mean, that she ever did, that she ever let her heart be so small and scared and selfish. She knows she named what’s between them, first, but she knows Poe _felt_ it before her, remembering the way he _tried so hard_ for her, cut himself off from all of the lesser chances at an hour’s release and delight to be worthy of the bond between them. When she finally understood, and set him free to be himself, the look of awe in his eyes had cut her like a blade, to the marrow of her bones. Finn, of course, had simply pointed out the new recruit’s adorable upturned nose and secretive thick eyelashes, sending Poe on his way to go _do his thing,_ and be _their_ _Poe_. Rey likes him better now that he doesn’t worry about them, now that he knows he can trust them to understand and approve.

Finn is best at taking people as they come, accepting Rey’s drive to do the right thing in the same way he supports Poe’s need to be the best. He doesn’t need protection. Mission by mission, the three of them are steadily becoming the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy, but Rey catches Poe’s eye often during mission debriefings. They nod in joint determination that he will be kept safe by them, by their best efforts, whichever one flies with him or holds down the home base beside him. Finn may well have been the magnet that drew them all together, those long years ago, and in any case, his hope, his faith that nothing will go wrong that they cannot sort out so long as they are together, has kept Poe and Rey from drifting into darker days and thoughts.

Rey remembers the look on Finn’s face, the first time she named it, disbelief and shock sliding towards comprehension. She remembers Poe nodding, his dark eyes serious, accepting the responsibility of those words. “I think,” she had said slowly, “that you are in love with me. And I think, that you are in love with each other. And I know that I am in love with you. So. What are we going to  _ do _ about it?”

They don’t know who  _ knew _ first, so they fight about it, when there’s time and energy. But they all know who had the courage to say it first. Rey led them into that first talk, and into that first kiss, and while she had to let Poe take the lead once they hit the bunk, she leads her boys still. She traces the lines of their bonds every night, strengthening them through force of will, and prays they will hold when Kylo finds her. Prays that the two smaller bonds she loves so well will be enough, when the pulse of the thing even Leia has not seen before compels her to walk across the galaxy and confront the obsession she does not  _ want _ .

Rey traces those light lines of love, and hopes with everything Finn has taught her about hope, and waits for morning, for the argument to start again.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come meet me with a compliment sandwich in the comment section before trying to constructively criticize me. I DON'T KNOW YOU, and I'm just learning how to do this writing stuff. I'M MADE OF PUDDING AND YOU'LL SCORCH ME WITH TOO MUCH HEAT.


End file.
